When Dozer was explaining to Neo what was in the gruel, he said it was a "single-celled protein." This simply doesn't make sense. Cells contain proteins; proteins are composed of amino acids. This would be sort of akin to saying that he had a link made from one chain.
The point your missing is that in the matrix there is no sun light. therefore no plants therefore no animals, in short no food. However what will still grow are microorganisms. These as they are right now can be used to produce large tanks of fermented food. Such as Sacharomyces a species of fungi, these can be grown and harvested and used for food, it starts of as a nasty looking mush but is combined with egg whites and texturised. Much like the Quorn burgers and other meat substitutes used as vegetarian food today. What Dozer was referring to was the name given to food made by this method 'Single Celled Protein'. This means a food mostly protein in content made from single living cells.
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Proteins are not single-celled. They're not cells. They are INSIDE cells and they serve as everything from functional biochemical mechanisms to structural components OF cells. There is no such thing as a single-celled protein in the same way there is no such thing as a single-brick house.
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Doesn't matter how advanced your technology is - you can't change the chemical makeup of substances. It's like saying "let's make some Iron out of Hydrogen and Lithium" - it won't happen... ever.
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"Single-celled protein" makes no sense whatsoever, and cannot be argued to make any sense. It is more nonsensical than any of the analogies which were given in this thread. For example, given that proteins are not comprised of cells, but that cells are comprised of proteins, along with many other components, saying "single-celled protein" is not like saying "single brick house"; it's more like saying "single house brick". The commenter who suggested that "single-celled protein" means a protein produced by a single-celled organism was trying to be generous, but was mistaken. Proteins produced by single-celled organisms are no different from proteins produced by multicellular organisms, and are not referred to as single-celled proteins. Indeed, many proteins have been cloned from multicellular organisms into single-celled organisms. This does not change their inherent character; they're all just proteins. Do a web search for the phrase "single-celled protein" and you will see that it has never been used outside the script for The Matrix.
In short, there is no explanation for this slip-up other than that the writers of the script decided to try their hand at throwing around some biochemical jargon despite being completely ignorant of the most basic concepts in biochemistry.
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Kore, where are you getting the year 2004? Did you watch a different movie than the rest of us? It is supposed to be about 2199. Now we all know that protein is a single cell, but you can have multiple cell proteins, so I think they were just trying to get the point across that this was a simple food, I don't know...
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Perhaps, also, we later discovered that our scientific discoveries were wrong. We all did think that the earth was flat for a while. Maybe scientists said "Hey, would you look at this, proteins aren't actually inside cells" or something to that effect. Maybe I am just totally wrong and am just very tired. It does happen to be 2:35 in the morning right now...
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